1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a file transmitting apparatus, a file transmitting method, and a file transmitting program, and more particularly to a technique of presenting to a file transmitting party information of a file format which is able to be operated and/or edited by a file receiving party and supporting file transmission according to the corresponding file format.
2. Related Art
As globalization of enterprises progresses, exchanges of non-structural data through networks increase, regardless of those performed domestically/internationally, intra-company/inter-company, the non-structural data including design information such as 3D-CAD drawings, specifications, and the like. However, since these non-structural data are generated by a variety of applications, the data cannot be opened by the file receiving party, if the application compatible with the data is not available to the file receiving party. In this case, the file transmitting party is required to resend the data in a file format available to the file receiving party.
In the related art concerning the above circumstances, a data format conversion method among companies using an EDI in which intra-company format data transmitted from an EDI user company as a transmitter that is unique to the EDI user company as a transmitter can be received by an EDI user company as a receiver as intra-company format data unique to the EDI user company as a receiver, for example. Data conversion profile information is preliminarily registered at a specific site on the Internet for converting the intra-company format data of the EDI user company into EDI standard format data and converting the EDI standard format data into the intra-company format data of the EDI user company. The intra-company format data unique to the EDI user company as a transmitter is converted physically and logically into the EDI standard format data based on the data conversion profile information for the EDI user company as a transmitter at the specific site. Then, the EDI standard format data is converted physically and logically based on the data conversion profile information for the EDI user company as a receiver into the intra-company format data of the EDI user company as a receiver, and transmitted to the EDI user company as a receiver. See Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Publication No. 2003-208382.
Meanwhile, it is proposed such a graphics communication system as the one implemented by an E-mail having an E-mail device of the transmitting side including an electronic mail sending means which transmits an E-mail, a graphics file attachment means to attach a graphics file to said E-mail, a reading means which reads a picture, and a mode designating means which specifies a mode in which a picture is read, an E-mail device of the receiving side including an E-mail receiving means which receives an E-mail, a file extraction means which takes out an attached file of an E-mail, a judging means which judges whether said attached file is a graphics file, and an image processing means which processes a graphics file, characterized by a function which adds information required for creation of a graphics file to a graphics file attached to an E-mail, and transmits an E-mail. See Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Publication No. Hei11 (1999)-65963.
According to the related art, file reception with a data format in compliance with that of a certain system, for example, an intra-company system becomes possible. However, it is difficult to handle the non-structural data since data must be stored in a general-purpose format. Further, according to the related art, though file transmission in response to the processing capacity of the transmission target becomes possible, the capacity of the receiving party must be known to the transmitting party, and this causes a problem in exchanging files with a variety of customers.